Always nice to see a new member. The Silmarillion is heavy material to start with when reading Tolkien. It isn't a novel but is formatted more like a cross between a history and a religious text. If you find it to difficult to get into, you might want to switch to The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit or another one one of Professor Tolkien's works that was published in his lifetime (The Tolkien Reader includes a number of shorter works). "At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." - Phantom F. Harlock